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Paul J. Balles considers the psychopathic phenomenon of the
"superiority complex" as an explanation of dysfunctional behaviour among
individuals and states, such as Israel and the US.

When I was living in Kuwait, I found it disturbing that a number of
Kuwaiti drivers behaved arrogantly. These drivers ruled the roads.
Everyone else was a paltry nuisance.

They flashed lights behind you when it was impossible to get out of
their way. They cut in front of you with total disregard for safety or the
driver they offended. They ignored right-of-way rules. They literally
stole spaces you were manoeuvring to park in, and they double parked
blocking you from leaving when it suited them.

What made matters worse: they became irritated when you complained
about any of this behaviour. I don't want to generalize as only a minority
acted as I've described; but they amounted to enough to irritate many
others.

What these arrogant drivers displayed certainly seemed like they felt
superior to others. I thought that their actions might have resulted from
a superiority complex. To understand the behaviour, I decided to do some
research.

I discovered that a "superiority complex refers to a subconscious
neurotic mechanism of compensation developed by the individual as a result
of feelings of inferiority". That definition, by psychologist Alfred
Adler, made sense since the offenders had no good reason to feel
superior.
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United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, former Canadian Supreme
Court Justice, Louise Arbour received a barrage of criticism in Israel
a day after her comments regarding Israel's continuing atrocities
commited against the civilian population of Palestine.

Yesterday, Louise Arbour toured the battered town of Beit Hanoun.
Residents took the U.N. High Commissioner through houses destroyed by
Israeli artillary fire; fire that has claimed the lives of at least 19,
wounding more than fifty others. It was for Arbour the beginning of a
five day visit to the area,planned to culminate in an audience with
Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Omert.

After hearing survivor's stories, and walking through the rubble of
destroyed houses, Arbour decried the attacks, saying; "The call for
protection [of civilians] has to be answered. We cannot see civilians,
who are not the authors of their own misfortune, suffer to the extent
of what I see here."
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Hey families! Dinosaur Adventure Land has got so many wonderful events coming up that you may want to stop in sometime! Since the success of our Home school Appreciation Day of 2006, we have decided to do more themed-events at Dinosaur Adventure Land. To start things off, we have decided to make April foolâ€™s Day (April 1st) â€œDarwin Dayâ€. We will have tons of great rides, puzzles, treasure hunts, and prizes to fill out the day. We sure hope to see all of you here at Dinosaur Adventure land, where Dinosaurs and the Bible meet!

Creation Science Evangelism and Dinosaur Adventure Land are dedicated to Young Earth Creationism at its most ludicrous: human children playing with dinosaurs in Eden, Mr. and Mrs. Tyrannosaurus Rex among the passengers on Noahâ€™s ark.

The first thing Democrats need to do when they walk into the Senate and
House chambers this January is to vote out a joint resolution repealing
the September 18, 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF),
which was the authorization for the U.S. attack Al Qaeda forces and the
Taliban government of Afghanistan.

That AUMF has been used,
wholly inappropriately and wantonly, by President Bush as the
justification for his assault on the US Constitution, for his willful
violation of laws domestic and international, and for his
unconstitutional usurpation of legislative and judicial power.

The president has claimed that the AUMF, far from simply being an
authorization to go to war against Afghanistan and against the Al Qaeda
organization there, was an open-ended authorization for him to initiate
an unending "War on Terror," which he has subsequently claimed has no
boundaries, and will be fought around the globe and within the U.S.

Bush has further claimed, without a shred of Constitutional authority,
that this AUMF makes him commander in chief in that never-ending global
conflict, and that as commander in chief, he is not bound by either law
or Constitution. It is this spurious and sweeping claim of dictatorial
power that the president has used to justify his signing statements,
which he has used to render inoperative in whole or in part some 850 or
more acts passed by Congress since 9-11. It is this same claim that the
president has used to justify his deliberate violation of the 1978
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act-a felony and violation of the
Fourth Amendment.

The Democrats need to achieve two things with respect to the mess in Iraq: 1) They need to help move the U.S. toward the best possible policy to deal with this mess; and 2) They need to make sure that the responsibility for the mess attaches to the people who made it.

The second task is not less important than the first. Thatâ€™s because the disaster the Bushites have created in Iraq is only one part of the serious damage they have done to America and to the world. And if the Democratsâ€™ handling of Iraq enables the Bushite forces to maintain power after their present public faces leave office, this serious damage â€“to our Constitution, to our political discourse, to the environment, to the just distribution of power and wealthâ€“ will continue.

This issue of the politics of responsibility arises because â€“at least so it seems clear to me, but of course not only to meâ€“ the â€œbest possibleâ€ outcome in Iraq will not be anything good.

Despite Wâ€™s continuing use of the word â€œvictory,â€ the chances of anything like victory are â€“ evidently â€“ negligible to nil. Despite the Bushitesâ€™ talk of â€œsuccess,â€ it is â€“ apparently â€“ unlikely in the extreme that the outcome will look to the American people anything like success. Despite the rhetoric about wanting the sacrifice of American troops not to have been in vain, there would seem to be virtually no chance whatever that the â€œbest possibleâ€ outcome will have achieved anything remotely worth the many costs paid by Americans, let alone the suffering Iraqi people.
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Robert F. Kennedy would have been 81 today. Tonight, the BBC will air a documentary about his 1968 assassination detailing the strong, credible evidence of a CIA role in the killing. The autopsy and ballistic evidence have long discredited the idea that the usual "lone nut" Sirhan Sirhan was responsible, or solely responsible for the murder. The Guardian has more in this article by the film's director, Shane O'Sullivan: Did the CIA kill Bobby Kennedy?

Again,
as we mentioned the other day in a piece about Jim Webb, there is no
point in hero-worshipping any politician. RFK spent his career as a
ruthless, ball-breaking operative. He began as a happy camper in Joe
McCarthy's brutal band of hard-right thugs; and later, as Attorney
General (an appointment of mind-boggling, unprecedented nepotism,
perhaps the most flagrant conflict-of-interest in American political
history, at least until Dick Cheney's wartime pocketing of fat checks
from Halliburton), Kennedy shredded civil liberties and constitutional
safeguards with a reckless, savage glee that John Ashcroft could only
dream of. (Again, Alberto Gonzales, the willing enabler of aggressive
war and torture, has probably outstripped RFK in this regard.) He
played the same role in his brother's administration that George W.
Bush played in his father's: draconian enforcer of loyalty to the
family's political fortunes, which trumped any and all other values.

A great democracy offers citizens sharp political choices. Thatâ€™s what gives political freedom meaning. With two-party control of Americaâ€™s political system, political options and discourse are stifled. We badly need more visible third-parties that can fully participate and reach the public with information about their platforms and candidates. In a nation that so worships competition it is hypocritical that there is so little political competition.

In truth, the Democratic-Republican partnership opposes competition. They have convinced Americans that votes for third party candidates are â€œwasted.â€ Yet the biggest wasted vote is for a Democrat or Republican that is almost certain to win or lose, and takes your vote for granted. This year, even in the face of enormous public dissatisfaction with the two major parties, and a widespread belief that both are hopelessly corrupted by big money from corporate and other special interests, too many voters sheepishly picked from column D or R, even for sure winners or losers.

In this remarkable year of attention to many hot issues, especially political corruption and the Iraq war, voter turnout was just over 40 percent, no better than the previous midterm election. One valid view of why 60 percent of eligible voters did not vote is that they saw little difference between the two major parties and, therefore, that their votes do not matter. Itâ€™s â€œtheyâ€™re all a bunch of crooks and liarsâ€ belief, bolstered this year with so much evidence of crooks in congress and liars in the Bush administration. Where supporters of Republicans or Democrats see different positions on issues, cynical citizens see nothing but campaign propaganda and civic distraction through divisive issues. So they do not vote their conscience or for lesser-evil candidates. Most have too little information about third party candidates to vote for them.
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In a world of spin, no one expects truth from corporate executives or the
politicians who serve them, but many of us hold out hope that in the
classroom and sanctuary we can engage one another honestly in the
struggle to understand the world and our place in it. So, while Iâ€™ve had
my share of squabbles with schools and churches over the years, I remain
committed to them as important truth-seeking institutions.

As a university professor who has recently returned to church membership,
I have a lot riding on those hopes, which is why it was particularly
disappointing in recent weeks to be scheduled for speaking engagements
and then abruptly canceled by a Catholic diocese and a private high
school in Texas. In both cases, some people in the institutions were
eager to have me share my knowledge and experiences, only to have the
leadership give in to complaints from conservatives.

My disappointment wasnâ€™t personal -- Iâ€™ve been rejected enough to be able
to roll with these punches -- but about a concern for the future if the
institutions we count on to create space for dialogue are so easily
cowed. The problem isnâ€™t that I lost chances to speak, but that everyone
lost a chance for engagement.

The first cancellation came from the Diocese of Victoria in September.
Staff members organizing the annual â€œConference for Catechesis and
Ministryâ€ asked if I would lead one session on media coverage of the
Middle East and another on strategies for speaking with children about
war. I signed on immediately, grateful for the opportunity to discuss
these important issues.

I was going to write about the recent "revelations" that leaders in Colombia's American-backed ruling party were hip-deep in blood and corruption with the right-wing militias that have murdered a nd terrorized thousands of innocent people. But I see that Jonathan Schwarz already has it well covered, with a sharp personal angle thrown in as well.

Schwarz is always worth reading -- as we've often said here, if you're not checking him out every day, then you've got rocks in the head, dad -- but he has been a man on fire recently. Hie yourself over there now, after a taste of these excerpts.

Before the 9/11 attacks came along, I used to work with groups trying to get the U.S. to stop funding Colombia's right-wing paramilitaries. The pretense, of course, was we were funding the Colombian military in their heroic struggle in the War on Drugs. The reality, that the paramilitaries were run by the Colombian government to murder anyone to the left of Elliot Abrams, is finally being acknowledged....

"The Chainsaw Massacre is not a film in Colombia," said government ombudsman Eduardo Cifuentes, referring to the April 12 [2001] paramilitary massacre in Alto Naya, 650 kilometers (404 miles) southeast of [Bogota]...

It left some 128 people dead, including 40 in Alto Naya, according to official reports quoted by Cifuentes in an interview with AFP...

Around 400 paramilitaries took part in this "caravan of death" against civilians accused of supporting leftist guerrillas, Cifuentes said in his Bogota office.

"The remains of a woman were exhumed. Her abdomen was cut open with a chainsaw. A 17-year-old girl had her throat cut and both hands also amputated," said the ombudsman...

"A neighbor pounced upon a paramilitary that was ready to shoot him and took his weapon, but unfortunately he didn't know how to fire a rifle. They dragged him away, cut him open with a chainsaw and chopped him up," a witness of the massacre told El Espectador daily.

I once attended a lunch with a Colombian union official. He said the paramilitaries would generally warn people like him of their intentions, by visiting them and cutting their sleeves or pants where they would later cut off their arms and legs if they didn't flee the area. Less important people didn't get warnings.

This year we're giving Colombia approximately 600 million dollars for these appealing activities. The biggest upswing in aid came during the last years of the Clinton administration. What's really neat is the paramilitaries are actually the ones controlling most of the cocaine trade in Colombia. In other words, as part of the War on Drugs, we're giving massive aid to some of the world's biggest drug dealers.

If past experience is any guide, the people mentioned in the above article as investigating this (e.g., Colombian Senator Gustavo Petro) have maybe four weeks to live.

SPECIAL BONUS DEPRAVITY: I once worked for a right-wing corporate lawyer who had (1) a massive cocaine addiction and (2) a Colombian maid who'd been a kindergarten teacher until she fled. I often felt he should have made the connection explicit by telling her, "Look at me! I can destroy your country and your life using only MY NOSE!!!"

Of course, in the long human tradition of utter indifference to those less powerful than you, he knew neither that she'd been a kindergarten teacher nor even that she was Colombian.

Yes, I'm a believer. I'm not an 'ignoranti' who believes celebrities are vapid and have nothing to offer. I'm an 'appreciati' who believes most 'celebrities' (not my favorite word) do a lot and give a lot... graciously, generously and frequently.

No, I'm not a gushy fan, as a true ignoranti would pronounce me. I'm a person who recognizes the value of giving, how much good it does, and the worth of the people who do it. I also value the First Amendment. You won't find me burning Dixie Chicks or Streisand CD's. Questioning Madonna's motives, or Angelina's. Denouncing Alec Baldwin, Rosie O'Donnell or Whoopi Goldberg. Quite the contrary. I uphold their First Amendment right to publicly voice their opinions. Be it an environmentalist like Robert Redford, an animal rights supporter like Bill Maher, or a gun advocate like Charlton Heston, they all have a right to their say.

And to their actions...

I applaud Sean Penn for making his way to Iraq and Iran to bear witness first hand. For going to New Orleans on the fourth day after Katrina. For arriving at midnight to sleep on a floor in the darkened city, absent cameras and lights. To pull boats through murky water and rescue people from their homes, while their President lounged in his own.
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On
a November 9, 2006, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Peoples Army,
(FARC-EP) sent an â€œOpen Letter to the People of the United Statesâ€. It was specifically addressed to several
Hollywood producers and actors (Michael Moore, Denzel Washington and Oliver
Stone) as well as three leftist academics (James Petras, Noam Chomsky and
Angela Davis) and a progressive politician (Jessie Jackson). The purpose of the open letter was to solicit
our support in facilitating an agreement between the US and Colombian
governments and the FARC-EP on exchanging 600 imprisoned guerrillas (including
2 on trial in the US) for 60 rebel-held prisoners including 3 US counter-insurgency
experts.

Under
heavy pressure from the White House, particularly its leading spokespersons,
the right-wing extremists like the notorious Otto Reich, Roger Noriega and,
John Bolton, the Pastrana regime abruptly broke off negotiations and in less
than 24 hours sent the Colombian Army into the demilitarized area, in an
attempt to capture the FARC leaders engaged in negotiations. The â€˜surpriseâ€™ attack failed but did set the
stage for the escalation of the conflict.

[I dedicate this essay to the untold millions who suffered as a result of Milton Friedmanâ€™s creation of an intellectual bulwark for economic brutality. On 11/16/06, Friedman died of heart failure, an ironic cause of death for a heartless individual.]

We have reached the deplorable circumstance where in large measure a very powerful few are in possession of the earth's resources, the land and its riches and all the franchises and other privileges that yield a return. These positions are maintained virtually without taxation; they are immune to the demands made on others. The very poor, who have nothing, are the object of compulsory charity. And the rest -- the workers, the middle-class, the backbone of the country -- are made to support the lot by their labor.-- Agnes George de Mille (granddaughter of Henry George), New York, 1979

Note that Ms. George de Mille penned her observations before the patron saint of the â€œhave moresâ€ established residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In less than three decades, a Friedman-inspired Reagan and his successors made astounding gains for the â€œvery powerfulâ€ de Mille described.

Reagan wielded the scalpel that emasculated organized labor and convinced America that â€œregulationâ€ is a four letter word. George H.W. Bush further crippled unions and condemned many poor Mexicans to corporate exploitation through his relentless efforts to make NAFTA a reality. Convincing the multitude of his compassion and empathy, Clinton proceeded to sign NAFTA into law and cheerfully eviscerated public assistance.
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